Movie Alert - 5/19/2025
Here's all the good shit I highly recommend checking out.
Does everything feel a little dire lately?
I am used to the air in this city generally not being great but lately the doom and gloom has made it particularly stifling. If you’re in any proximity to the entertainment industry, you know what I’m talking about. Every conversation I seem to have with anyone lately is about how much everything sucks and how we’ll never work again, but also everyone pretends that actually they are working and everything is fine. Once a day I hear some veteran of this industry say “when people ask me how to break in, I tell them they should look somewhere else.” It feels like entertainment jobs are precious heirlooms and everyone thinks everyone else is hoarding them somewhere.
Counterpoint: Go to therapy. Take antidepressants. Smoke some weed. Get into baseball. Ride a bike. Watch all the movies you’ve been meaning to watch. Get a stupid day job you don’t give a shit about. Catch up with someone who doesn’t even watch TV. Go touch a tree. Find things to do that aren’t just working in entertainment. I think this place can be so all-consuming at times that people forget their entire personality isn’t “I’m an entertainment worker” and if that’s your entire life, I get why it’s the only thing you can talk about.
There are always going to be ups and downs at the Hollywood Dream Factory and that’s okay. The way you get through the downs is by finding and nurturing your community, not telling everyone else that the lifeboat has reached capacity and can’t let anyone else on and also we’re all going to die anyway.
Misc cool stuff
Preston Sturges! Hail the Conquering Hero in 35mm at the Los Feliz 3
David Lynch’s TV show On the Air at Vidiots - it’s kinda hard to find so I do recommend this if you’ve never seen it
Funeral Parade of Roses in 35mm at Vidiots
Victor/Victoria in 35mm at Vidiots
The Departed in 35mm at the Egyptian
Crimson Tide in 35mm at the Egyptian
Night of the Living Dead in 16mm at Long Beach Art Theatre
The UCLA archive (which is free at the Hammer Museum) is truly balling out this summer. There’s a huge Altman retrospective with Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean on 35mm which I feel like never screens anywhere, M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud double feature in 35mm which truly goes hard, The Long Goodbye in 35mm, Thieves Like Us and Kansas City in 35mm as a double feature, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Popeye in 35mm as a double feature which is so unhinged, and Short Cuts in 35mm (though I will be 33 when that plays).
